Elfen Liner Notes: Family Disunion
by Gojirob
Summary: The story of Elfen Lied's second family, how they were shattered, and how they eventually came back together after terrible pains. Note: These are stories from my files, written a while back so they should not interfere with clearing my now-considerable backlog.
1. Chapter 1

The Severing

by Rob Morris

The man's question was cut off along with his head. His murderer knew she had a day or two at best before either the family's absence or the smell was noted.

"All of Kanto must like spoiled milk! Maybe they have cocoa powder to mix it with?"

No cocoa, only strawberry. The powder was the same color as her hair, and always giving her this had been a joke to the orphanage attendants. Lots of things had.

"Yeah. I should have tripped the gas main or something, before I left. But then, I wouldn't have met him, would I?"

She actually tried to feel bad for these people. They had done her no wrong-at least in part because she hadn't given them a chance to, but still.

"Too bad, but there's no way they were like you are-Kouta."

In fact, the girl was forced to move early the next morning, and thought little to nothing more of the family she had wiped away. Others were not so lucky as to forget.

In another home, connected to this one, another girl, younger than the killer, tried to rouse the sister of the man the killer had beheaded. Finally, she gave up and sought out the wisest man she knew.

"Papa? Mama will not move. I don't understand. I don't understand why she has become so quiet. Maybe Uncle can make her smile again? Uncle always knows how to make Mama smile."

The man held his little girl, who really could not understand why Uncle and his family weren't already there.

"Uncle won't be coming over soon, honey. But Mama will be better before long. She's gotten like this before, remember?"

The man was being euphemistic. His wife's mental problems, her withdrawal and coldness, had been well in evidence before her beloved older brother had been taken from them. Now, he feared, her tendency to think first of her own comfort and well-being would threaten their marriage, and maybe even their daughter.

"I want Mama to be well and happy again. I promise to be extra extra good if Heaven will grant this."

He smiled and shook his head.

"Baka! How can even my Mayu-chan be any better than the gold she is?"


	2. Chapter 2

Tenderness Is Not Allowed To Persist

by Rob Morris

Mayu was a dutiful girl, always trying to be good.

Since good was defined by never upsetting Mama, this was hard. She even began to wonder if she was the kind of person who deserved to have bad things happen to her.

She wanted to talk to her Papa, but Papa was already talking with his brother, her uncle. It sounded like sad stuff, so she didn't interrupt (a dutiful girl never would).

"So you were there? At the Festival? You could tell a little brother these things, man."

Uncle smiled, and made sure to smile at Mayu, which made her smile.

"Got an idea. Why doesn't Mayu-chan go and see her Aunt and the new baby? I'll bet they'd really both like that!"

The little girl got up, and nodded enthusiastically.

"Mayu would like that as well, Uncle!"

Immediately correcting her rush to Auntie's hospital room, Mayu thought of how she would try to be a good onee-chan to the new baby, and make sure she was always good, too. Once she was out of earshot, the older brother explained himself.

"I didn't tell you-or even Arika-because it was all so bizarre. I didn't want to think about it myself."

Kenjiro, the younger brother and Mayu's proud Papa, shook his head.

"Is what they're saying true? Was there a bomb?"

The older brother shrugged.

"I dunno, man. It looked like it could have been a bomb, but not only people got cut cleanly in two, so did the concession stands-one made out of steel. One thing I'll never forget-this little girl walks away from the whole thing-her hair looked pink, maybe from splattered blood. It was all over her. She gave me a look so creepy, I got a headache. Bad headache, like a blood vessel burst or something. The cops found another little girl, cowering behind something, then screaming to them about how a horned devil had done this. Then it gets worse."

"Worse?"

"LOTS worse. See, I was watching the news report the next day, and that cowering girl with the wild story to tell? Her family left to go back to Hokkaido. Someone was on the train, butchered her, her father and left her older brother a trembling wreck."

Kenjiro was not law enforcement, any more than his brother was. But he knew what this likely was.

"Kaze No Kaede-Killer Wind From The Maples. Are they ever going to catch this guy? Onii-Chan, tell the annoying tagalong kid brother some good news."

He had some, at least.

"Well, with my HVAC certificate, my friend says I'm a shoe-in for that project off on Breakfront Island. The government is expanding the-hmm-oh yeah-the National Institute On Human Evolution. Must be big. Old Man Kakuzawa gave up his chairmanship of the Zaibatsu just to head this one up personally."

Kenjiro decided to lighten the mood, which frankly needed it.

"My big brother-part of a corrupt government boondoggle. Like the Supremes said-brings nothing but heartache."

The two laughed, just a bit, but then Kenjiro got serious again.

"Hey, Bro? That bomb, if it was one? Could it have been a biological attack, too? Maybe it's responsible for-ya know? It was ten months back. The timeframe would meet up."

The new father shook his head.

"Can't say, little bro. But the hospital said they're sending for a specialist. Actually, he's a guy from the Institute. Then we'll find out what's going on."

At the door to the hospital room, Mayu poked her head in. Auntie Arika smiled. It was easy to make her smile. So hard with Mama, especially since her brother and his family went away-something about the Maple Trees.

Mayu missed her other uncle, and knew her Mama missed him so much, she had become permanently sad, despite how good she had been.

 _*Mayu will just have to be better, then!*_

Someone who already thought she was as good as a child could get nodded at her.

"Has our Mayu-chan come to see the new baby? How about it, Hana? Do you want to meet your big cousin?"

Mayu moved forward, gingerly, awe and wonder still in her eyes, years before it was taken while the thief never once looked her in the eyes.

"Ohhh, Auntie...Baby Hana is so pretty. She looks like a little..."

A third voice broke in, one that shook Mayu and couldn't fail to press a button in Arika.

"MAYU! YOU WILL QUIT BOTHERING YOUR AUNTIE RIGHT NOW! She needs her rest."

Mayu knew better than to offer even the slightest rejoinder to her mother, but did say one more thing before running out of the room.

"My apologies to you, Mama. Good day, Auntie Arika. It was good to meet you, Baby Hana. I hope that we will be friends as you grow older."

A fresh glare from her mother completed Mayu's withdrawal, happily well away from the room where she felt, once again, she must have done something bad.

If a child before birth had any say in who its parents were, then perhaps Mayu could have been said to do something at least half-bad.

"KEEP your devil-freak child away from mine! Isn't it bad enough you brought that thing into the world? Your family is from Hiroshima, isn't it?"

Arika did not like her sister-in-law in the slightest, and wished that Kaze No Kaede had gone to her home, while Mayu and Kenjiro were out. The woman's late brother, she had liked.

"My family is from Sapporo. That is supposedly a potential site of a third atom bomb drop. So your rant is more accurate than most of them. Your child is remarkable too, Shin-Bone. Remarkable in that something like you produced such an angel as Mayu."

Arika called her Shin-Bone, a mix of her proper name and the place she felt a pain in every time this woman came around.

"You insult me? When your bad genes are giving our husbands' family a poor reputation?"

The baby, not yet named Hana on her birth certificate, was still sleeping soundly. Arika was as worried as anyone for her health, but respected her ability to snooze soundly as verbal cannon fire erupted.

"It's reputation you're concerned with, isn't it? That's really all you're ever concerned with. If my child's scalp deformity was somehow catching, you'd be concerned less for Mayu and more for what the neighbors think."

Arika had struggled to see what her brother-in-law supposedly saw in this woman. The good supposedly buried beneath the selfish child nearly everyone else viewed on constant display. It was not something she was capable of doing.

"Some of us are concerned with keeping up appearances, and putting our best foot forward. If we are taken lightly by those around us, then what do we have? So will you relieve this clan and have that monster and her 'scalp deformity' put down?"

Arika did not have the powers that her child would one day display. Her sister-in-law, had she known what gratitude was, would have been so grateful for this fact, had either of them known.

"Tell my niece to keep her whiny-devil mother away from my entire family. I am sorry your brother died. But he loved your family almost as much as his own, and you do his memory a great wrong by always remembering him in sadness that you then export to everyone else around you!"

'Shin-bone _s slapping hand was stopped by a hand grabbing hers. Her brother-in-law had a limit._

"If you think we're dumping our baby in a field somewhere, and if you think that you are ever touching my wife, then it's my brother's sanity I question."

Kenjiro arrived and shook his arms in the air.

"Bro, Don't! You'll just make things worse."

The bitter woman ran out, shaking with fury, as her brother-in-law let her husband have it.

"Wake up, little brother. It isn't ever getting any better with her."

Kenjiro shrugged before running after his wife.

"You know how she gets!"

If the new concerned parents thought the departure of their soon-to-fracture married relatives would give them a moment of breathing room, this was to prove as great a fantasy as Kenjiro thinking his wife was just having a bad day.

A man entered the room, bespectacled and looking very serious. He inspected the sleeping newborn.

"So curious. Not only hair colors outside the Japanese experience, like blonde or red, but now lilac-purple?"

Behind this intruder, two big and obviously armed men stood ready. He looked at one of them.

"What room is available?"

"Number Seven, Chief Monitor. The former resident rushed the attendants. Standard procedure followed."

Her husband reasoned that this was the man from the Institute he was told of, but Arika, resting up, had not been told anything.

"Just who are you, and why are you here?"

The man looked not uncaring, but nor did he look overly compassionate, a fact confirmed as he got right to the point.

"My name is Daisuke Kurama. I am here for the child."


	3. Chapter 3

The Harsh Reality Of The Moment

by Rob Morris

"Your child is one of many to suffer from this outbreak. It is not our intent to harm her."

Arika held baby Hana (not yet truly named) all the closer, though she held no illusions about her peril, or her chances of resistance.

"Doctor Kurama, is it? If she were treated for this outbreak, as you call it, could she one day be returned to us?"

Kurama seemed a mix of sympathy mixed with a routine that had to be met.

"Mrs. Hagiwara, I'm afraid the answer to that is no. First of all, your child, like the others, is not Human."

The baby's father also saw what he was up against, but he was bristling.

"She looks Human to me, except for the obvious. Sometimes, kids are born with little oddities. Freckles, extra toes or fingers, like that. Doesn't mean you need armed guards to take them from their families."

Kurama did not seem upset or annoyed by the questioning.

"Sir, she is or rather she possesses a genetic mutation that marks her off as a member of a new species we are calling Diclonius, for the two horns they possess. While the cause of the outbreak is not yet known, we are beginning to suspect some agent altering the baseline code of the fathers. In any event, she is not made like us. Her aging will be doubled, and older girls show signs of nascent superhuman abilities-abilities they likely cannot control, and will in time represent a threat to their families. Some of these have shown these abilities earlier than others, with deadly results for all involved."

Arika sniffed while looking at the baby. She even seemed on the verge of handing her over, despite every instinct telling her to run or resist.

"Will she be put down? Because if she is to be killed for not being like the rest of us, then I don't care how many guards you have, I'll put up a fight."

Far from taking challenge from her tone, Kurama seemed to delight in it.

"She will live out her days in our facility. There will be a need to conduct tests, but I promise you we are working on making these tests more humane and less potentially traumatic. My bosses are the best in their profession. Terrific leaders and fine Human beings."

Kurama would one day recall all these words and fight between crying and laughing at their cosmic inaccuracy. Yet just as Arika and her husband seemed resigned to the fate of their baby, someone who knew aught of diplomacy pushed their way into the room.

"Oh, let them put the little beast down! It's a damned oxen, not a girl. That woman is the cause of all this-she should be forcibly sterilized."

Arika instinctively pulled the baby back to her, and her husband stood by her side as she did. Kurama sighed, and turned to one of the guards.

"This woman not only intruded on what should be a secure room but interrupted a peaceful transfer of custody with her blather. Take her away."

The woman Arika disdainfully called Shin-Bone did put up a fight as her husband Kenjiro and their daughter Mayu entered into the room.

"Kenjiro! Tell these jack-booted thugs to release me IMMEDIATELY!"

Kurama looked past the shrieking fool and at her husband.

"We operate with sanction from the highest levels of authority. If anyone else interferes, they will be held under observation as well."

Kenjiro shook his head.

"Can I request that she be taken to our home?"

Kurama could almost smell the sanity on this man, and realized how many scenes like these he must have dealt with, to remain so calm in such a situation.

"Most certainly. Take Mrs. Hagiwara to her home. Because until I am done, she is restricted from coming back here."

Kenjiro then did something he would later vastly regret.

"Mayu-chan, go with your mother. She needs the company in this trying time."

It was clear that this was everything Mayu did not want, but she obeyed.

"Yes, Papa. But Mayu must do two things first."

Mayu ran to her aunt's side and kissed the baby on the cheek.

"Baby Hana? Mayu will not have the chance to be your Onee-Chan. For this I am sorry. I will always remember you, and how pretty you are."

After a light hug, Mayu turned to Kurama, a man she would not see again until he was as lost mentally as her own mother.

"Kurama-San? The baby will be alone now. Will you be her Papa, since her own Mama and Papa can't be with her anymore?"

Kurama was thrown by the little girl's stare.

"I will-I will do what I can to see to all that."

It was not yet in Mayu to challenge an adult, so she accepted his words and prepared to leave. But if the sane well behaved girl-child was leaving quietly, her noisome mother was not.

"You-you are going to allow them to do this to your wife? What kind of weakling are you?"

Kenjiro looked her in the eye.

"The kind of weakling who kept you from being arrested or held in clinical observation. The kind who is trying to be a comfort to his elder brother and his sister-in-law in their darkest hour. I will see you at home."

She became calmer without truly being calm, with a bit of petulance thrown in.

"You see to your brother's ruin of a family, but not to your own."

The guard led her away with Mayu following after, with a glance back before hurrying to keep pace. Arika kissed her child, then handed her off to her husband, who hugged and squeezed the little girl he would never see again, this before holding her out to the government agents.

"I'm applying for a job at the Institute. Can I visit her there, or at least see her? Let her mother know she's doing alright?"

Kurama took the child in his arms, a tender but utilitarian grip all at once.

"I'm afraid not. Children like her are kept in a very specialized area. One a Maintenance and Facilities staff member would never see. But I will add my own recommendation you be hired."

Arika realized her man's application was known of and taken into account, possibly as leverage. Kurama bowed to both parents.

"You are both to be commended. Too many parents in this sad circumstance have either welcomed the taking of their child, often with invective resembling that of your sister-in-law. The few that have resisted did so in a fashion that demanded a response or severe warning. Your affection for your child and your rationality about what must happen are praise-worthy."

The baby's father wiped away a tear.

"And yet it changes nothing. Bigots or saints, accepting or wailing, you're still taking her."

Kurama saw the same look in Arika's eyes.

"It is for the best. Should I wake her, so you can say a true farewell?"

Arika shook her head.

"When she wakes up, you'll get why at least this way really is for the best."

Kurama did not linger once the baby was secure in his arms. The guard who had remained with him asked a question.

"Will you do look like that little girl asked, Room Monitor?"

Kurama shook his head.

"I have no time to personally oversee every last experiment. She will be the experiment in Room Seven. If I think of her at all, it will be as Situation Nana."

The two were out of the hospital in minutes, soon to meet a transport back to the island base along with the comrade who went to deliver the hysterical wife of Kenjiro back home. Once on the island, the baby would wake and Kurama would learn that, whatever strange powers the infant might one day develop, her lungs were already quite healthy.

Kenjiro himself had made a requested jaunt to the hospital cafeteria, returning with coffee, soda and beer. It was a beer a recent mother, now deprived of part of her soul, drank down greedily.

"Well, I'm sure not feeding anymore, am I?"

Kenjiro marveled at his sister-in-law.

"Lady, what type of iron are you made out of?"

Arika closed her eyes and laid back in bed.

"Not iron. Just lead. Screaming won't do any good. I'm pretty sure we'll receive notice never to speak of all this, and while that Kurama was decent enough, I want no more attention from those phantoms. I'll cry when I'm in my home, holding my-Kenji, didn't your brother meet you in the cafeteria? That's where he said he was headed when he left."

Kenjro looked around. He also had no idea where his brother was.

In the city, wandering about in a daze, was a man overwhelmed with grief, shame and guilt.

"He said it was the father's fault. My fault. My fault my baby girl got taken away to God knows where. Has to be something I did. Bro's little one is perfect. Not mine. All my fault. All my..."

A voice from behind him roused him from his stupor.

"Talking to yourself?"

He turned, and saw a young girl wearing a snow cap and sporting pink hair. A face he had seen in dreams and nightmares both.

"You again? Listen, kid-do you have any health problems from that night at the carnival? Cause my little girl-ahhh, that damned headache again!"

The girl looked puzzled.

"Wow. I guess I got you already. Glad you already had a child. Guess that just leaves bait, huh?"

As it would be for his child at the unseen hands of this odd girl, so did the father now keel over. Unlike his child, he would not and did not survive the encounter. As the odd girl had planned, people began to gather around his dead body.

"Another one?"

"It's like a cardiac epidemic!"

"Did someone call the paramedics?"

"How many people in this burg have weak hearts?"

"I hear the government released somesuch virus or chemical to make this happen-they wanna sell Kamakura as a golf course to some American developer from New York."

"Oh, sure. There's no chance these morons just love bacon too much, is there?"

The chatter went on, and more gathered as the paramedics arrived and futilely attempted revival. Every single man in that crowd left the scene with a special gift their children would have to pay for.

In the shadows, Lucy smiled and made sure to work the crowd.


	4. Chapter 4

The Breaking

by Rob Morris

Kenjiro Hagiwara had no idea that his life had fallen apart. This would come soon.

Young (very young) Mayu Hagiwara had a better idea of this. To be fair though, her mind was swallowed whole by a mantra she had repeated hundreds of times from the moment her enraged mother had arrived home with her. A dutiful girl as ever, she stared straight into the corner she was led into.

"There never was a baby with bluish purple hair and horns. Auntie Arika never had a baby. Mayu is wrong and bad to think so. Mayu is disobedient if she holds otherwise."

The words were painful at first, and then they simply made her numb. Then Mayu began to believe them to be true. The final blow came when she began to wonder why her mother would ever tell her to say such a thing, when obviously there had never been such a baby.

Kenjiro, arriving home after seeing his worried sister-in-law from the hospital to her and his brother's home, heard Mayu's near-chant.

Later that same day, he would learn it was now merely Arika's home. But for now, he concentrated on the child that almost everyone in the family loved.

"Mayu-chan?"

Now lost in the mantra that she believed would redeem her in the eyes of Mama, Mayu did not respond and kept right on talking.

"There never was a baby with bluish purple hair and horns. Auntie Arika never had a baby. Mayu is wrong and bad to think so. Mayu is disobedient if she holds otherwise."

Suspecting (rightly) what had caused this, Kenjiro went to shake his daughter out of this induced stupor, if need be.

"Don't bother her. She's finally gotten it right. A few more hours of this, and perhaps this obscene nonsense will have finally vacated her empty little skull."

Even without the pink-haired killer who had touched and harmed both their families, and many more, there was a world unheard of by these simple folk.

"I hope your brother has the sense to not try and make any more babies, or at least not with that acid-tongued woman. It's bad enough I'm forced to make our child do this, simply to free her mind of deranged thoughts of mutant babies."

This was a world of wonders, a literal multiverse of infinite possibilities. From that multiverse, one day years from then, another version of this woman, Kenjiro's wife and Mayu's mother, would visit, spending a month in a place called Maple House, also known as the Kaede-Sou.

"Maybe now that their drama - their latest drama - is done with, you can finally get back to being a more attentive husband, and keep that willful child in line."

In that case, the multiversal visitor would be a young girl, as bright and chipper and sharp as the woman native to this world was none of those things. To Mayu, she would be a briefly-held sempai, and an inspiration to never give up on a dream.

"You're fortunate I'm such a forgiving wife. I cannot fault you for aiding your brother in a time of crisis, but in this you've failed to see to your own family. It's the talk of the town-or would be if the local hens and bums had any brains to talk on anything besides heart failure conspiracies and serial killers who ride on the wind. Idiots!"

In both cases, these people would be named Shinobu Maehara. While there were some differences in time of birth and family structure, they were the same person, except they could not have been more radically different. The reasons for these differences are a story for another day. But they were stark.

"Most of the people I know wonder why I even put up with you."

Because few people could have been less true, we will call the one in this story Shin, the origin of her sister-in-law Arika's nick-name of Shinbone.

"Well? Nothing to say?"

Shin Hagiwara often stonewalled her loving and forgiving husband into stunned silence.

"Are you freaking kidding me? Are you finally, once and for all, out of your freaking mind?"

This was none of those times, nor would it be ever again.

"My brother and Arika have just had their newborn baby girl snatched out from under them, and they aren't even allowed to publicly grieve. You feud with Arika, but can't get the better of her, so you take it out on our precious girl. This, Shin, is a bad time for our family - all of us, the part that lives here, and the part that lives in my brother's home. You, who have lost your own brother and his wonderful family, must see how devastating a time this is."

Kenjiro shifted down his tone at the last second, while also painfully realizing that appealing to her late brother's memory was possibly the only connection he had left to a woman he had once seen in a light as lovely as her counterpart was seen by others in her home universe.

"You dare compare my brother and his world of stability and normalcy to the chaos your brother and his wife brought into the world and intended to inflict in the midst of our family? If you wish this marriage to continue, you had best just put those two trouble-makers aside once and for all!"

Kenjiro felt he had made a vow before Heaven to be this woman's husband, so even in his despair, he made once last effort to salvage what he now realized had perhaps never really existed. Gathering his nerve, he shoved his finger right into her face.

"No! If YOU wish this marriage to continue, you must do what everyone I've ever known has said and seek psychological help because woman, you are INSANE!"

What happened next he would remember until his dying day, yet at the time it was all a blur.

Shin completed her descent into animalistic behavior when she bit through and then swallowed his finger.

Enraged and in agony, Kenjiro slammed her in the stomach, causing her to vomit up, including his finger, which he recovered and ran off in horror and fear, also in the back of his mind worrying that his daughter might see her father killing her mother if he stayed.

A neighbor saw him run, and called for an ambulance.

At some point, he passed out.

When he awoke, a wife was standing nearby - his brother's wife, Arika. He briefly looked and saw his hand - his fully intact hand, almost fully bandaged up.

"Arika-Chan?"

He was glad she could come to see him, but worried for her condition so soon after her tragic loss. Yet her condition was far worse than he could have imagined, as was his own.

"Kenji-Kun-your brother is dead."

In a corner of the house soon to be no longer his, a little girl who was also soon facing an enormous loss chanted still, since a dutiful girl would continue until told to stop.

"There never was a baby with bluish purple hair and horns. Auntie Arika never had a baby. Mayu is wrong and bad to think so. Mayu is disobedient if she holds otherwise."

She would pass out sitting in that chair, while the mother who no longer remembered telling her to repeat those words fumed and raged over slights real but exaggerated, and some wholly imagined.

"I am in Hell. I am under assault. I am not shown my due in any quarter. I am dismissed out of turn, and I will not be dismissed."

Only the pain she wrought was not imagined, and it would merely expand in scope.


	5. Chapter 5

The World Is a Scandal by Itself

By Rob Morris

Whatever tradition truly was in these cases, Kenjiro's elderly parents (who had doted on the sons they once though they would never have) did not think well of divorce. So as his father sat by his hospital bed, his words were almost shocking.

"Your mother and I agree. You should end things with this woman and take your little girl away from her forever. If your mother could rise from her sick bed, she would be here with me and say the same."

Kenji knew his father was not senile. Nor was he apt to repeat himself at all, let alone within the same sentence. So he knew this was serious.

"All respect, but it was you two who drilled into me, and to my brother – you keep with that choice, that vow you made in the sight of Heaven. You also made me aware – even if they are a bunch of busybodies and hens, the whispers of those around you about your family matter. What will it look like, one brother suddenly dropped dead, the other turning his wife away? To say nothing of a niece who by law, I cannot discuss except with those who knew her mother was pregnant and delivered?"

His father had come there at some risk to himself. Before 'Hana' was taken away by Dr. Kurama, their greatest worry had been that her grandparents would not live to see her. They had lived, but they would still die soon without ever having glimpsed her.

"I grieve for that little horned angel. But she is gone from us, forever. Mayu is not. Not yet. Did you know your mother attempted to see her at your home, and was turned back? Shin kept insisting the girl was in school in the very late afternoon. Your mother is on in years, but she is no idiot. Like the artist Michaelangelo, you have insisted that an angel resides inside the stone all others see. But unlike that artist, you have chiseled and found only more hardened stone. You kept your vow to Heaven. But Heaven never let you see that there was no other soul involved in that marriage. It is a sham, and as a last act of respect to your parents, we ask you to call it done."

As Arika arrived to take the old man to see his fallen son's grave, Kenjiro told his father he would obey their wishes, which he realized fully were his own wishes and those of reality itself.

Yet before the week was out, his parents would be laid to rest beside his brother. What the then-unknown Lucy had not taken, what their own government had not seized, it seemed increasingly like the Heaven he and his family had sworn before was determined to rip from their grasps. He knew that thought petty at best and blasphemous at worst, but increasingly, he simply no longer cared.

But he still cared about his little Mayu. And his soon-to-be ex-wife? Well, she, in, the simple act of being her spiteful self, had given him the perfect opening to begin getting her out of his life.

"You've a lot of nerve, showing up here, after abandoning us!"

He plowed through the manure. This time, he was ready. He hoped.

"You never once came to the hospital. There are spouses who have shot at and stabbed each other who make at least a visit."

He knew better than to let her speak.

"You also refused to come to my parents' funeral, or let our daughter see her grandparents one last time. Yes, I get it. We've all shown you, wondrous you, such massive disrespect. Well, here's something to confirm your view of me, and of the world. I want a divorce, and I want full custody of Mayu. Forget everything you are about to say. You can't stand your daughter. You've made that clear. I can let you have this house, and some visitation rights, but if you put up a fight, you will regret it."

A small head poked around the corner from her room. The face on the little girl lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Papa! Oh, Papa! You've come home at last! Mayu wants you to never leave again!"

Kenjiro had once more underestimated the lack of a soul behind the eyes of his future former wife. He thought the embrace he and his child shared was to be the first of many free of the shadow of anger and petty rage. In fact, it would be their last for years to come.

"Papa never wants to leave again, Mayu-dumpling. When you finish school this year, we will go away together forever. This is my promise!"

Sending Mayu back to her room, Kenjiro moved to cut off ever more avenues for Shin to explode on.

"You raise a hand to her, I will cut both your arms off and throw them in a wood chipper. You raise your voice to her, I'll tear your throat out with my teeth. I'm warning you again, Shin—don't fight this. I have numerous people willing to testify what a pain and nightmare you are. I don't wish to destroy my daughter's mother in court, but so help me I will."

He left her standing there, fuming. Yet once again, he had outsmarted himself, and let the idea that the person he had wed had such things as common decency. For if he was not looking forward to savaging Mayu's other parent, she surely was.

Another person despised by Shin Hagiwara (and the feeling was lethally mutual, if feelings alone could be that) was her soon to be former sister-in-law. Some would say that Arika was adjusting incredibly well to the successive losses of her infant daughter (through 'miscarriage' though some few knew better), her husband, and finally, her husband's sweet and gentle parents.

Those some few would be wrong.

"I didn't ask for a copy of Sailor Moon Tankobon 1."

The shop owner shrugged.

"It's a freebie. I had spare copies."

Arika tossed it back at him.

"Now you have one more. My order is full, and I'd like to pay for it."

The owner openly sighed.

"Please take it."

Arika showed annoyance, which the owner and his otaku customers actually reveled in, since the only woman who ever came in their shop was starting to seem incapable of emotion.

"Because I'm a girl?"

The owner looked down, and then again at her.

"No, dammit! Because I would like to give you something where the world doesn't end in flames – well, it does, in ice, but that's like a far future that leads to a utopia-oops."

Arika placed it back by his hand again.

"Damn, the whole series is spoiled now. Too bad."

The owner gestured at the rack behind him.

"Then in the name of Heaven, please take anything not by Nagai, Tomimo, Kitoh, Ito—and especially Mark Millar. Yeah, he's not a mangaka, but he makes me want to slit my wrist. Pick anything that does not involve a demon tentacle impaling a baby and then bisecting the mother length-wise!"

Arika frowned.

"That was one of the best scenes in Devilman. Wish it had been in the OVA. Now you mentioned Millar – ahhh, WANTED – much better than the movie."

Arika actually was briefly unnerved when every other voice in the shop responded in unison:

"That's a given."

But Arika regained her footing when she tossed in one more item.

"The Illustrated Clive Barker. That should do it. So should we settle up, barkeep?"

The owner, who admittedly did not have enough customers, and certainly not enough pretty ones, pushed her selections back behind his counter.

"I'd say you've had enough."

As Arika left to seek another shop, one of that shop's more stable customers walked up to the owner.

"So, Bro? What's her story?"

The owner actually looked around before responding.

"Remember that little sister your Mom didn't have?"

The otaku now looked kind of sad.

"Geez, her, too?"

The owner shook his head.

"This is turning into one of those things that no one talks about but everyone knows about. Kind of like my uncle and his 'best friend'. What are they even doing with these kids? I'm telling you, it's 731 all over again."

The young otaku remembered smiling at his little sister before being ordered to forget he ever had one.

"Huh? 731? Is that like the Illuminati or that crap?"

The owner straightened his stock. Arika was not careful about her browsing.

"No, 731 was for real. Our guys set up in China and did – whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted. For SCIENCE!"

The younger man shook his head.

"I guess they don't teach that downer stuff anymore. Then again, it took me till last year to figure out Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. Cause our books sure don't tell it."

Given how seeing Arika dwelling in the apocalypse manga always depressed him, the owner enjoyed the talk.

"Don't get me wrong. The Yanks and the Allies could all be rotten. But in the Axis? We specialized in deep rotten. 731, Mengele – and what was it the Germans called their 'super-kids' program?"

The otaku pulled a picture from a hidden portion of his wallet. It was him, holding and kissing on the cheek a smiling baby girl the law now said never existed. He had used a disposable camera, and a developing machine with no digital back-up. Otherwise, they would have found him by now.

"I think they called it 'Lebensborn' Bro. Gonna rat me out?"

The owner shrugged.

"She deserved better. They all deserved better. We all deserve better. Or maybe these births are what we deserve? Maybe—maybe we're the ones living in an apocalypse manga?"

The younger man tried for an answer.

"I dunno. Do we have any doomsday cult members occupying high positions in government?"

The two laughed before parting ways, but whether that laughter was genuine or anxious, neither could say.

As his brother's widow tried to lose herself and her grief over a baby with horns in the worlds of a mangaka who did not believe in the innocence of children, Kenjiro learned anew (and for perhaps the last time) the folly of trusting in the humanity of his estranged wife.

"What do you mean, you wish to keep her? The day we presented Mayu to our families, you said, and I quote: "Everyone's fawning over the miracle, and not the one who made it happen." You also said you wished we waited to have children – forever. Has anything of that changed?"

Inside, he knew he had changed. All of the patience and excuses he once knew better than sacred prayers were exhausted, and he now recalled none of this things with 'bemusement'. Now there was only rage. Rage that was met by more and much better practiced rage.

"What will people say of me if I turn my child out, or worse yet, allow her to be taken away like your brother allowed for his freak? I will not have neighbors and friends casting aspersions on me."

There was so very much wrong with her selfish tirade. But he touched none of it, especially the toxic 'neighbors and friends' part.

"Fine, you're a great Japanese mother. I will proclaim to all who know us: My former wife is devastated by the sudden and savage murder of her beloved brother. Wishing to protect our child from having to witness her in such a state, she asked me to care for her alone until this horrible time begins to pass from our memories. I regret that we had to part ways, but she is so devoted a mother, this was the only path she saw."

Kenjiro wondered if he could find a Catholic Priest, this to give the Truth itself Last Rites and a proper burial. But he knew the path to her agreement was a thorough buttering-up, or at least he thought he knew this.

"My daughter will stay with me. The unfit and unworthy who flee like craven cowards when the slightest thing goes wrong…"

While he wanted to give her one finger, he instead showed his still-scarred one, bitten off and sewed back on – with some stomach acid burns. She showed no remorse or embarrassment.

"Yes, show everyone what you made me do. This conversation is over!"

He blocked her from closing the door. He leaned up into her face.

"You don't want her. You've never wanted her. So why are you trying to keep her now?"

She had thought this was her moment of triumph. She would be proven badly wrong in this. She smirked.

"Because you DO want her. And I want to thwart whatever it is that you want—even at the cost of having to care for that mewling disobedient brat!"

Slamming the door this time, she watched him walk away from inside.

Satisfied as he briskly rounded the corner, she did not see Kenjiro pull a small tape recorder out of his pocket, followed by his cell-phone.

"Yes, it went just like you suggested. She couldn't resist bragging on her 'scheme'. No—no more hesitation, for Mayu's sake. I want her away from that monster for real and for good. We have this recording – let's bury her with it in court."

After he hung up, Kenjiro tried not to hate himself.

Arika found that her job and her dark fictional urges were not quite enough to drive away the images of a little girl almost named Hana. So the Association of Mothers Touched by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome seemed a good place to reasonably vent. It was not impolite, they decided, to burden others with your problem when all shared the exact same tragedy. In fact, there were two such groups in the areas and towns around Kamakura.

In one of these, the women (and some few fathers) spoke tenderly of finding their child already gone in their cribs, and what they tried to do to reverse or deny this grim circumstance.

In the one Arika attended, attendants were vetted by inquiring as to whether their family had received aid from some 'nice people from the government' in their time of need. When some applicants to this second group said no or were confused by the question, they were gently guided to join that first group instead.

As time had gone on, more and more chairs were empty. One had the name placard removed. Arika asked the group leader about those missing.

"Her? Hell, they found her in a sealed garage, engine running."

Another chair had a name on it but no occupant.

"That girl wanted no more reminders. Took a job in Maine, of all places, or as she put it, _as far away from my baby's non-existent grave as possible._ Not really sure if it is the furthest, but it is far away."

Another woman looked far too chipper.

"She and the hubby are going to try again. She says a lot of women in her family have twins, and maybe if she has them this time, at least one of them won't have…won't die of crib death. Either brave or stupid. Most consider having the tubes tied – guys too."

One tall, well-kempt woman with glasses sat in the corner, looking all forlorn, even by the standards of that place.

"She just comes here and sits down, doesn't talk to anyone. I'd check her out, but truth be told, we can't be chasing anyone off. A lot of us just end up shrugging and saying it's time to move on. Can't blame them, but I'm not ready for that, just yet."

Arika turned and noticed someone slightly familiar.

"You! You're the otaku from the shop! Are you stalking me, you little piece of-?"

The group leader moved between them.

"Rika, you're way out of line. This is a good kid who's trying to honor the memory of his little sister, the one his mother now loudly denies ever having. He helps clean up this place, so we can keep to our business."

The kid was near enough to tears that Arika saw he was for real.

"I was gonna be an Onii-Chan. Someone was gonna call me that. And I would have beaten up bullies and fresh guys for her, and everything."

As if to prove his belonging, the young man pulled out his precious hidden picture, and showed it to Arika.

"See how precious she was? I was gonna make sure nothing bad ever happened to her. Because that's what a big brother does, right?"

Arika now wished the little fool had been stalking her, even tried to go chikan on her. Because seeing that little horned girl ripped apart all her denial and breezy inoculating plunges into the many mangaka-created apocalypses available to a soul in despair.

"She's—she's beautiful!"

Yet as Arika handed the photo back, it was snatched away from both her and its owner. The forlorn woman with glasses had suddenly sprung to life. Tucking the photo away, she had a cell-phone in one hand, and a pistol in the other.

"Yes, Room Monitor. We have the contraband our source spoke of. It will be disposed of, once we return to HQ. I'll file a full report with Oomori-San-oh? With Isobe-San, then. Shirakawa out."

The boy-man fell to his knees, pleading with the field agent.

"PLEASE! IT'S ALL I HAVE OF HER! I WAS GONNA BE AN ONII-CHAN! No one in all the world thinks I'm cool, but she would have, at least for a while. Let me have it back. Anyone who sees it will just say I photoshopped it or something."

Shirakawa turned to leave, but the otaku got in front of her.

"Watch yourself. You've already broken the law by keeping this."

He shook his head.

"I can't stop you. I'm not that stupid. But please-give me a number—any old number associated with her, where you take them. Do this, so that at night, I can at least send her a prayer for good fortune and her big brother's love."

Shirakawa did something that also technically broke the law, but she had the photo, and wanted to avoid a further scene. Arika saw her check a data-pad that looked much more advanced than anything she had ever seen.

"Number 28. Send your prayer to the girl in Room 28. That is all you get."

After Shirakawa left, the meeting broke up. As she herself left, Arika saw one woman glance nervously at the otaku, which prompted Arika to walk up to her.

"Him? He's harmless. He'd never hurt you. But I might. Because I hate snoopy rats. My sister-in-law is a snoopy rat. Do yourself a favor and don't attend any more meetings. Oh, and tell me—did they give you all thirty pieces at once?"

In fact, there were no more meetings of this group. Grief, broken trust and the reveal of continued government scrutiny combined with the futility of it all to make it all seem pointless. Arika wanted to go to her one remaining family member, even if only an in-law, but did not know of his marriage troubles. In her overwrought state, she honestly feared killing Mayu's mother in front of her, and so decided to simply go home, lonely though it was.

"Kenjiro-Kun?"

He was standing outside her house, his face looking only slightly better than the young man whose heart she saw broken in front of her eyes.

"Arika-chan, I'm getting a divorce. I finally decided to play her dirty game and fight hard. But how can I ever match her low-life behavior? She's now alleging that I am and have been a menace to my daughter's honor and innocence!"

Arika had thought 'Shin-Bitch' couldn't surprise her anymore. She was proven badly wrong.

"You—harm Mayu-chan? Damn it, Kenji-Kun, make her prove it in court! She has always been full of shit, but now I think it's leaking out her eyes and ears too. A court will see that, and maybe toss her in Arkham Asylum!"

Kenjiro paused his despair.

"That's fictional."

Arika nodded.

"Just for her, we'll make it real."

He shook his head.

"I have to take it slow. My attorney says that there's a good chance a sudden flurry of back and forth charges about this sort of thing could get Mayu placed in the foster care system, till they sort things out. Who the hell knows what could happen to her in there?"

He looked down.

"I also have no place to stay. My rental's lease—I've been so busy dealing with her bullshit I—"

She took his hand.

"You'll stay here. Knowing Shin-Bone, she'll probably say we're having an affair anyway. You're alone, Kenji, and I can't face my family in Sapporo, when they all knew I was pregnant. Stay with me. Please."

Silently promising his dead brother he would keep things between them as though she really were his own sister, Kenjiro grabbed his few belongings and moved in. The next morning, as Arika anticipated, Mrs. Okuno from down the way knocked on her door.

"So—did he finally leave that yelping monster?"

Her attitude was, to say the least, not what she had been expecting.

"Okuno-San, I swear that we are not sleeping together. For one thing, we're both too numb. For another, we both loved my husband. He did leave—his wife—and is trying to get his daughter away from her custody. When all that is settled, he will move out."

The older lady shrugged.

"I say, start screwing. Your husband hated his brother's wife and would rather you be with him, I'm certain. As to his little girl, I have never encountered a child who apologized that much while being such an angel. Maybe she should be written off as well. That possessive harridan would probably kill her rather than give up what she sees as her property—or trophy. Arika-chan, you two get together and make your own baby. You two are alive and sane. The same can't be said for your respective spouses."

Arika had been fighting these kinds of thoughts as Kenjiro lay on the living room floor, and resented them being brought up to her face.

"What of the gossip? What about the scandal?"

Mrs. Okuno sighed.

"Honey, there are dead men all over the place who had healthy hearts. There are women who lost their children to something the law forbids them to even broach. I'm old, you hear things. A lonely couple getting together after their situations are forever upended? That's not a scandal. That God permits this world to continue? That's the scandal."

She left, and after she closed the door, she saw Kenjiro standing behind her, the common ache between them finally proving too much as their lips met.


	6. Chapter 6

Usefulness

by Rob Morris

"Why do I have to bring her to court with me? She'll miss school, her teachers will whine, and I have told you, her father is a menace to her."

Shin Hagiwara had read a book, one by an American real estate developer. She had thought she would find wealth tips inside it, but the man bragged (through his ghost writer) mainly of himself. However, she had seen something she found to be of great use over the years. In essence, crime, punishment and litigation could be put off or extended for so long, those seeking redress would be forced to give up. As long as you were steadfast, inevitably they would dither and fail. So it had been with her wretched husband and the child.

"In court, she will be protected. The judge is responding to the other attorney's demands that they not just accept our word that she is safe. This has been overall going our way. Defying the judge is a good fast way to change all that."

If her own attorney, who had caught her in a few 'difficulties reconciling the truth' wondered if the charges themselves were yet another instance of this, he kept these concerns quiet. He had enough deniability to protect himself, though she was checking even this amoral stance.

"Can't we just let the judge see her, and get her out right after?"

The attorney was about to ask if he thought the girl would be molested right there in court, but challenging her was not worth his time or the headaches this would bring.

"His attorney has the right to be there, and so does he. We've played at the edges of this, and I think it's worked. But if you honestly want her to remain yours, we need to do it this way."

He immediately regretted his choice of words. It was sure to set her off. So very much did. He swore he would take the chastisement of his senior partners and drop the case this time.

"I will prepare her to appear in court, then."

He left, wondering how he had lucked out and not really caring. He also decided that, when the judge made a choice, he was seeking another case, passing this one on to whatever noob the firm hired next.

"Mayu-chan, you will come here."

In fact, he had raised a concern that tapped into her self-centered desires. Her late brother had known exactly how to do this. The man divorcing her had never quite grasped it.

"Yes, Mama."

The girl had her uses, Shin had to admit. At her age, her devotion to and dependence upon her mother meant no room for defiance or distraction Her obedience at school meant no reports or conferences. Mayu was the nail that did not stick out, and would never need to be hammered down, and yet, this is just what would happen in all senses of the word.

"Your Papa has died. I was trying to be a good mother, and protect you from this news. But now, a man claiming to be his business partner has gone to court to take our home from us. Do you wish to cause us to lose our home, Mayu-Chan?"

One day, Mayu would have a new Papa. A younger, frustrating but caring man, who seemed to have amnesia yet was mostly gaslighting himself. When Mayu studied what this 'gas-lighting' meant, her blood boiled as she realized how often and how early her mother had enacted this upon her.

"Mama, Mayu would not wish to make our grief at Papa's passing any worse, or lose our lovely home."

The girl was determined that, just as her good Mama had protected her from this sad news, she would protect her Mama from her own tears. These would come soon.

"We will need to go to the court house. When we do, you must only look at the judge and say that you are alright. The corrupt partner has actors and recordings of your Papa's voice. You must ignore these entirely, no matter how real they seem, or they will make you and your Mama into dirty street people while they live in our home."

As long as she had the girl, others would see her as a good responsible person. No one would speak against her. She would have the respect she deserved.

"Mayu will do all this, for her Mama and for her Papa's beloved memory. No one will trick Mayu into thinking what is false is real - because Mama loves Mayu more than anything."

 _*Mayu-chan? Look at me. It's Papa - I'm right over here. Look at me-please?*_


	7. Chapter 7

Ties

by Rob Morris

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON HUMAN EVOLUTION, BREAKFRONT ISLAND, OFF THE COAST OF KAMAKURA, KANAGAWA, KANTO, JAPAN - 1996

"Thank you so much, Room Monitor. With all the guards late this morning, we have no escorts."

The discovery of a discarded plastic 35MM film canister had both Kakuzawas on high alert, and the guards who weren't being held up from entering or leaving were busy inspecting the ones that were. Kurama knew Subject Seven had to be gotten in for testing - the adage that they were only this young once worked double-time, since every twelve hours was a day, when dealing with a horned girl.

"I believe I can transport Subject Seven to her destination. She is a quiet one, well behaved, and with no abnormal activity at her eighteen months, I think I'm safe."

Not that he was in danger of infection by her. Hadn't he learned that the hard way? But that life was gone. No more children, no more wife. He recalled telling a man who nearly ended up working on the island that he could not see his daughter who was taken there - in fact, the very girl he now held in his arms - that of course he couldn't see her there. Now, that rule applied to him as well. Mariko was in a section of the facility he had no access to. He had saved her, and entered what was nearly indentured servitude to the Kakuzawas. But for all he could actually see her, she may as well have been dead.

"Let's hope, little one, that the tests we conduct upon you lead us to the origins of this mutation. By our best estimates, your father may have been one of the original infected."

Oddly, her little eyes seemed to attend his words. Was comprehension even possible, he wondered? This was a new species, and even the limited information they had about their development indicated wide variance in all skill sets.

"Number Seven - let's get you to a place where idle speculation gives way to hard science-"

He smiled despite himself. He was still holding a young child, and certain tender feelings were impossible to shut out entirely.

"-though not too hard for you, I hope."

The girl responded to his smile with her own, and then proved that, mutations and possible new evolution aside, she was still a Human baby. She playfully grabbed at his necktie, which practice meant was quite snug around his neck already.

"Number Seven-you must stop this! You are choking meeeee!"

Gasping for air, he acted to deny the baby her plaything by yanking it away, finally forced to throw the tie over his shoulder to keep her from simply grabbing it again.

"Young lady, there is civilized behavior, and then there is chaos..."

Chaos was indeed the order of the day, as a baby suddenly denied a plaything decided to make her displeasure known, at the top of her small but powerful lungs.

"oh, please don't cry..."

Kurama thought briefly of karma. The way in which he'd attempted to kill the newborn Mariko with all malice and forethought nearly became his undoing at the hands of another innocent Diclonius child. For some reason, he also thought back to the baby's cousin, a girl whose name he did not recall, who had admonished him to be the child's new parent.

"At least she was calmer than that demonic mother of hers. Number Seven...please stop crying!"

He looked about the corridors for any aid he could, and of course there was none. The alert meant that anyone not directly overseeing one of the girls was part of the lockdown to find out if a roll of film had been smuggled out, or was trying to be so.

"Wait. That door. I've never seen this part of the facility before. Is anyone inside this area?"

Kurama was now flatly desperate, and Number Seven's lungpower seemed as formidable as any hidden ability she might have. So he waved his access card, and surely enough, it let him in. Of course, he could not know that this level of access had been mistakenly assigned to him, and was only supposed to rest with Chief Minister Kakuzawa. A keystroke error on the part of an overworked tech meant this mistake could go forward and this tech would soon be unsuccessfully begging for his life.

"Hello? You over there? Could you help me?"

The woman was decidedly plain-looking, but to Kurama, she was a goddess if she could just calm his charge down. She did seem very surprised to see him in there, and there was good reason for this.

For in a way, this woman was a goddess, with the power to reshape Human evolution. Sadly, this power was held in the vise-like grip of a madman whose insanity Kurama would one day learn the full measure of.

"Please-she won't stop crying."

The woman immediately placed her gaze on the baby's head.

"Give her here. This child is a horned girl? There's more than one?"

Kurama was too agitated to take stock of this odd statement. Later on, he would wonder how anyone could work in the facility and not know there was more than one horned girl.

"Yes. We bring them here out of an abundance of caution. We feel they may gain strange abilities one day, but the age threshold has yet to be determined. Number Seven is normally a very good girl, but now she won't stop crying."

The woman in fact did not work there, though everyone who did would soon enough know this woman's works. In particular, the security staff.

"You call her Number Seven? She looks about three years old, but she still has crying jags like these?"

Kurama realized something strange, this time about himself. He had been using the English pronunciation of 'Seven' rather than the Japanese, almost unconsciously.

"Seven, like all Diclonius, ages twice as quickly as normal Human children. As to calling her that, I suppose I use 'Seven' to differentiate from Nana, which in our land can also be a proper given name. She is just an experiment, after all."

The woman, whoever she was and where ever she had come from, seemed to be able to do magic with the child, and she was once again calm and cooing.

"I-how horrible. Here, you hold her again. Perhaps you should remember, if she ages so quickly, then any time spent away from you seems longer, and her time with you more precious as a result."

Kurama almost felt compelled to correct her.

"She and I have no connection. She is just an experiment."

The woman turned and walked away as she responded.

"You called her a good girl. People don't call experiments such. I can see the affection in your eyes. My own husband refused to even hold our child. I am a simple thing, but not as stupid as some seem to think. Now you should go."

Kurama realized that, even with the lockdown, he had taken a very long time to get where he was supposed to be, and so heeded the woman, taking his charge directly to her observation room.

In weeks to come, he would try to find this helpful woman again. But construction in that part of the facility meant that he could never even find that one door again, and if he had, his mistaken access had long since been removed.

In the observation chamber, he saw that no staff had yet arrived.

"Room Monitor Kurama to Security. Is the lockdown still in effect?"

 _*Just now lifted, Room Monitor. Turns out some poor dope is on a sugar-restricted diet, and used the film roll to sneak jelly beans past his nagging wife. If the Kakuzawas don't throw him out the door, the other guys are gonna rag on him something fierce.*_

Yet the backlog meant that it might still be an hour before the staff got in there, so Kurama shrugged and began to see what if anything he could observe from the child.

"Now, Number Seven, speak. You should be ready to by now."

He pointed to his own throat, and gestured at hers. But now not even so much as a coo or a gurgle came out.

"Number Seven-speak. Say something."

She was the proverbial child who had been unable to stay quiet who now would not utter a sound. Exasperated, Kurama raised his voice, though he did not yell.

"Nana!"

The girl's eyes lit up, and she did indeed say her first word, one that had Kurama's eyes wide as saucers.

"Papa!"

 _Elsewhere in the facility, a big man glared at a small but determined woman._

 _"You say you passed no message on to him? Why should I believe you?"_

 _She was sadly very used to this game, and his ascendant paranoia._

 _"Why would I even try that? I thought at first his entry might be some sort of test or trap for me. Kurama, you say his name was-he works for you, like everyone else here. My concern was for the little girl he held."_

 _Chief-Minister Kakuzawa seemed unmoved._

 _"Why would you not wish to even try and escape?"_

 _It was her turn to glare._

 _"Even if I escaped, even if I found my way out, and even if I then avoided your grasp on the outside, how would I ever see my son again? You let me see him rarely enough, and hold him almost never. Check your own cameras and microphones, and don't tell me you don't have them. I told Kurama nothing."_

 _Kakuzawa moved to exit the smaller room in which she was being temporarily kept, until the new wing could be finished and isolated from all accidental intrusion._

 _"If your behavior has been as model as you claim, you may get to visit with our son by the end of this month. But on the off-chance you should see Kurama again, make no attempt at alliance with him."_

 _She may well have been a simple girl, as many had called and dismissed her as, but she saw little to no chance of meeting Kurama again, and in this, she was quite correct._

 _*So-he seems to fear Kurama for some reason. He needs his services, but worries that his intellect will see the Doctor to his schemes' undoing. Yet he couldn't reason out a small child's love. Live for your Nana, Kurama. Just as I live to see my son, and maybe-just maybe-one bright day, to once again see and hold my daughter, my precious Kaede.*_


End file.
